


It’s no use trying to be romantic in Avonlea

by amoama



Category: Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-15 05:16:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16927197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amoama/pseuds/amoama
Summary: After the aborted attempt at recreating Lancelot and Elaine in episode 2x04, Anne returns to the Lake of Shining Waters.





	It’s no use trying to be romantic in Avonlea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [midrashic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/midrashic/gifts).



> So in a way the timeline here is slightly altered from the TV show, imagine Gilbert had arrived home to Avonlea a little earlier - just before Anne's appointment with some hair dye! 
> 
> The title is a line from the book.

_Elaine was cold, the winds blew around the tower, and had awoken her before the sun. She didn’t watch the window as she waited for the sunrise, instead she focused her eyes across the room to the exact place where the first glint of sun would land. She felt the pleasure of anticipation, as she had every day of the last 7, the first sparkle of silver, trailing over the powerful, battle-battered shield. The sun would hit just as the strike of a sword and the shield gleamed in response as if strengthened by every attack. She lay as still as she could, holding her breath against the rattle of the wind. She was colder today than most mornings and the wait felt longer. The darkness around her gradually weakened but there was no sun. Foreboding ran through her, leaving her more shaken than any wind._

It was very trying of Mrs Barry to be such a sensible person. Anne would have thought it appropriate to call her a stick-in-the-mud but her sensitivities towards Diana forbade such sentiments. However it was very hard to bear that the day had not gone at all to plan after Elaine was denied her most solemn and solitary send-off over the Lake of Shining Waters. 

Anne felt haunted by the play left-unfinished as though Elaine herself were at her shoulder begging for release. The sense of the story without its ending was entirely anathema to Anne such that she was even more distracted than usual and was quite overcome at dinner and had to be ordered into eating each mouthful by the watchful Marilla. 

_That was the day the news came from Camelot of her knight’s wounds and of his disappearance. Already she had known such news would come and already she had known that she would go to him. Her father looked resignedly at her, “being so very willful” he said, blessing her as she mounted her horse and slipped away down to Camelot, the wind restless at her back._

At dusk Anne found herself wandering further and further towards Orchard’s Slope. She knew she did not have long but Marilla was busy tempering Mrs Lynde’s table designs for the parish fêtè and Anne could rely on that being a tempestuous and involving discussion between the two ladies. So before she had even fully approved of her own plan, Anne was back at the little landing jutting out over Barry’s Pond. 

_Easily she found him, in the caves below Astolat, just where her brother would think to hide him, in the woods she and her siblings knew so well. He lay stricken, in the dank open tomb and with her eyes she berated her brother for his carelessness. Quietly she organised the cell to comfort him, gathering drapes and towels from home; she cleaned and re-bound his wound and mopped his brow. Gently she fed him morsels of soup. He healed slowly but assuredly as the days passed. She began to understand, just as she had looked up in that first moment into his haggard, love-wasted face and seen the honor there and loved him for it, that with each ounce of strength he regained he turned more determinedly from her, rejected her tendering more roughly, in order to discourage her adoration. She saw it and hid the hurt it caused her. Still he relied on her ministrations; in unknowing moments he looked lovingly upon her, talked to her as to a sister, as she well knew her brothers fondly spoke and felt towards her. Each kindness such as this became a rock within her heart, each studied rejection a whetstone. Tremulously she cared for him, stalwart, feeling again the wind around her, shaking through her, fearing his leaving, and unable to bear the loneliness to come._

The light was mostly moonlight now and Anne was already quite frightened by the determination that had taken hold of her imagination. The Lake appeared quite desolate and the tall grass at its edges whispered fiercely at her. 

“There is no one to be the brothers,” she said aloud, hearing the uncertainty in her own voice, and wishing heartily for Diana, Ruby and the others. But the voice of Elaine in her head was stronger. _You must,_ it seemed to say, _you must, for me._

It was the wrong time of day anyway for the brothers to mournfully kiss her brows, she must do without. Instead, she thought, as she wrestled the small flat that must pass as a bier away from the landing, pushing off with all her might, the pretending must start once I am out on the Lake, as though the bier had been travelling downstream all day towards Camelot. This decision pleased Anne and she settled herself in the bow of the flat as well as she could. 

_In their parting he could not look her in the eye and, for all his heroic deeds, in this he was a coward; for had he looked he would have read all too clearly in her eyes her inward chant, “him or death, him or death” which infected her mind and would not loosen its hold. Instead, with his eyes downcast, he kissed her hand, her brow, her cheek and bade farewell in brisk and brotherly fashion. He took his shield from her, her morning hope, and as he rode away he glanced not back at her._

_Then, in the days that followed she made her plan, her little death to infiltrate the land, to lay herself at last at Lancelot’s feet. She saw her father’s desperation, her brother’s protestations as from afar but they shook her not, and the wind around her blew wild and reckless until upon the 11th day of his absence, consumed with the bitterness of love she succumbed to the sweetness of death, the dream of her much-mourned reception in Camelot foremost in her mind._

It was cold, of course, but Anne bore it by remembering how cold poor dead Elaine would have been. There was a peace upon Anne as she drifted, blanketed by the first few stars of the evening. She had stopped being scared, lost as she was in her fantasy. This had to happen to appease Elaine, who herself had devoted herself to fantasy. Anne knew she was doing what she must for a kindred spirit. Elaine knew too well the pain of not being loved and died of that pain such that her wilful, devoted spirit held all of Anne’s sympathies. Such might I have been, thought Anne, had I not been brought to Avonlea. 

She was just beginning to have traitorous thoughts about _when_ she might arrive in Camelot and slight misgivings about just _how_ late it might have gotten when she heard her name being called with some alarm from somewhere above her. 

Anne opened her eyes and cast about in the darkened surroundings for the speaker. It sounded like Gilbert Blythe but of course he was somewhere far away like Trinidad or Jamaica, not Camelot. But before her eyes could fasten on anyone, she noticed all of a sudden the cold water sloshing around her. Her dress and boots were wet. She appeared, she realized, to be sinking. 

“The pile,” Gilbert was shouting, “the pile.” 

Finally Anne grasped his meaning, spotting that the flat was just about to reach the log bridge that crossed Barry’s Pond and that she had one chance to leap up and cling onto one of the long wooden poles that formed the foundation of the bridge. She jumped immediately, landing quite painfully against the pile and scrambling up it as far as she could. 

“Anne,” Gilbert shouted in alarm as her grasp slipped a bit and she slid ominously to one side so she was more hanging over the water than anything else. 

Gilbert clambered over the side, clinging carefully to the log railing while he reached down to her. It seemed impossible for Anne to reach out to him without falling. Instead he put his hand almost under her armpit to hoist her more upright on the pile. He held her steady while she pulled herself further up its length until she could grab a hold on the deck of the bridge. Quickly he released her and leapt back onto the bridge to help pull her through the railings. 

She arrived face down on the bridge, sodden, shaking, and cross. 

She stayed there, in desperate mortification. All she could see of Gilbert Blythe were his shoes. As if he should be Lancelot, for her to lay herself at his feet! And to have the temerity to be here, of all places, to rescue her from her watery grave! Her wild thoughts were a tangle of shock and confusion at the abrupt interruption to her fantasy. “Oh, pray for my soul!” Anne cried, feeling utterly wretched. 

“Anne,” Gilbert was saying, “Anne, are you alright? You’re freezing! Here, take off your coat and wear mine.” 

He leaned down over her and Anne wrestled herself to her feet to avoid being manhandled by Gilbert Blythe. She stayed still however as he tugged her wet coat off her shoulders and wrapped her in his own, blissfully dry, one. She felt a surge of gratitude she would rather not feel and set her chattering teeth against it. 

“Much obliged, I’m sure,” she said, doing her best Mrs Lynde impression. He grinned at her, relief flooding his moonlit face. He looked a little ghostly himself, appearing so unexpectedly in the gloom. 

“What are you doing here?” she asked. 

“Well, I’ve come back to get on with my schooling,” he said, “But I should ask you what you were doing in that sinking dingy!”

Anne tilted her chin up, she would rather not tell him, but she supposed a rescue did require some sort of explanation. 

“It’s rather a long story, and you’ve mostly missed studying _Lancelot and Elaine_ , but I suppose if you had been here you would understand better,” she began. 

He frowned slightly. “You were being Elaine?” he asked, displaying rather too much understanding for someone who hadn’t had to study the poem. 

Anne sighed, “It was all supposed to be over and done with this morning, but Mrs Barry interrupted and I just couldn’t let Elaine go on without her ending.” 

Gilbert frowned. Anne shivered some more. Her feet felt especially numb. “I really ought to get back to Green Gables.”

“I’ll walk you,” Gilbert offered. 

“I suppose you must to get your coat back,” Anne allowed. 

“Yes, I suppose I must.” 

“Anne,” Gilbert said tentatively, after they’d begun walking, “Would you mind?” He put his arm around Anne, but held it hovering above her shoulder awaiting her answer. 

Anne stopped walking to look at him. She felt she should be affronted but in seeing him he looked as cold as she was and she had his coat. The fall season hadn’t turned to winter yet but certainly it was coming to Avonlea soon. Everything still felt very unreal to Anne, to be here in the night, with Gilbert returning. She decided she could always pretend this evening hadn’t happened – she wasn’t even supposed to be out here. She nodded her agreement. 

“You’ve been to very warm places, I suppose,” she said, keeping her voice steady as he put his arm down around her shoulder and pulled her gently towards his body. She felt suddenly cocooned in a way she only usually felt when she hugged Matthew. 

“Yes, Port of Spain was hotter than the very sunniest summer day in Avonlea. Even the air felt different, like the sun was closer and kinder than we feel it. But on the ship, working by the furnaces, well, I never want to be as hot as that again, it felt like my skin would melt right off.” 

Anne was a little overawed by these hints of his adventures. In truth, she was rather used to being the one in Avonlea who had experience of the outside world and now here Gilbert was having been far beyond Canada even. She felt a surge of jealousy and keen interest. She felt, she supposed, a bit like Elaine must have, in her tower in Astolat, studying the battle scars on Lancelot’s shield. 

“But Lancelot loved the Queen, of course,” she murmured to herself, lost at the edge of an unarticulated thought.

“Hmm?” Gilbert asked. He rubbed his hand up and down Anne’s arm. 

“Oh, nothing,” Anne said, “I just keep thinking I’m dreaming. It doesn’t seem very real that you’re here. I think I will see you again in the morning at school and be just as surprised as now.” 

“Oh yes,” he said, “I didn’t ever imagine this is how we would meet.” There was a pause as they navigated a rather larger puddle in their pathway, reluctant somehow to break contact, they shuffled sideways to skirt round it and Anne put her arm around Gilbert’s waist to hold them steady. Daringly she left it there as they continued on, feeling she owed him some of the warmth of his own coat. 

“I shan’t be at school tomorrow though, Anne,” he told her, “There are things to settle first at the docks that might take a few days. It was just, we made land and I suddenly couldn’t wait to be back here and see the place.” 

“You’ll have to tell us everything about what happened while you were away, you didn’t say much at all in your letter and everyone will want to know. And there’s lots to catch you up with as well, about the gold, or well, there not being any, and how much trouble that’s caused for everybody.” 

It was odd, considering how preoccupied with it they had all been, but Anne felt now, nestled in beside Gilbert, both of them shivering slightly, that the news of the gold was really not terribly important after all. Gilbert certainly didn’t seem affected either way. They were approaching Green Gables at last and as they neared the gate Anne reluctantly shrugged out from the warmth of Gilbert’s arm. 

“Well, thank you Gilbert,” Anne said, whispering as they neared the house, “You’ve done me a great service this evening and I acknowledge I owe you a great debt which I shall endeavor to repay in full one day.” As they’d walked Anne had come round to the idea of saving Gilbert’s life in return one day. 

“I’ll see you in a few days, Anne.” 

She nodded and they swapped coats. “Even if you’re only a dream or a ghost, Gilbert, welcome back to Avonlea.”

“Thank you, Anne,” Gilbert said and then, after a pause, “Goodnight, Elaine, the fairy lady of Shalott.” 

“That’s the wrong poem!” Anne said, crowing just a little too loudly at his mistake. 

“Anne Shirley Cuthburt, is that you?” Marilla’s disembodied voice projected out into the darkness and made Anne gasp in surprise. She looked quickly at Gilbert, “Run!” she mouthed, and was filled with exhilaration at his answering grin before he turned and darted away into the night. 

She stared out after him for a moment before Marilla appeared in the doorway and Anne recollected that she was soaked through and very late. 

“Anne, what have you been up to? Do you have a thought in your head for your own health and well-being?” Marilla demanded, “Come in at once!” 

In fact Marilla was so intent on worrying about Anne being so wet and cold and haranguing her about it while rubbing her down with a towel by the fire that Anne barely had to say a word about where she had been and what she had been up to. 

“We’ll talk more in the morning,” Marilla harrumphed as she turned down Anne’s bed covers and heaped more blankets on top of her. Anne laid meekly in bed, reveling over the feeling creeping back into her toes as she warmed up. She had an overwhelming sense of satisfaction running through her. She knew that, despite the upset at the bridge, she had laid Elaine to rest. Instead of being haunted by her presence, she felt Elaine as a sister lying beside her, rather like it felt when Diana stayed over. “So Gilbert’s back,” she whispered to Elaine, and then, after a little contemplation, “Well, I suppose I’ve learnt my lesson, it’s simply no use trying to be romantic in Avonlea.”


End file.
